The dying breed of creators
What would you define as good content? Is it the production value? Quality of the gear used? The value provided? On paper, probably a combination of all these, or at least some of them. But what about the persona you take on in the virtual world, for those few minutes of filming, etc? Is that the REAL day to day creator? Or just an act? (the following images are just for decoration, and have nothing to do with my ranting)
As scrolling through TikTok and YouTube the other day, I realized a trend (which isn't new by any means of course), that the level of obnoxiousness, over-the-top-ness, brain cell-damaging, borderline cancer type of content seems to spread like an out of control wildfire burning down every inch of dignity and moral in its way. While questioning the route social media provided mankind, I asked myself the following questions: How are these people when the cameras are off? Is all this borderline behavior really worth all the money? AND WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE WATCH AND ENJOY THIS CONTENT?
I don't want to name any channels, creators, or people, since this is just my personal opinion on my little website, but you probably know what type of content I mean. It is no secret that having an extroverted, open, and sometimes “out of the ordinary” persona is often a key element for fame, flavored with the talent to entertain of course.
These days it seems like the number one tool to a big following is not the value provided, nor the quality of the content, but the sheer obnoxiousness of it, even if it's destructive, harming others, faked, or misleading.
This is even more concerning when looking at the target audiences of these “creators”, who see this as aspiring, seeing all the brand deals, money, and fame these people make of them. I am pretty sure that we don't even have to talk about morals at this point, they never entered the room in the first place. I am sure all the parents are proud of their sons and daughters dancing in front of the camera, creating thirst traps, pranking people, or just acting like a cartoon characters to entertain the masses.
I would be a hypocrite if I wouldn't admit that my goal isn't a bigger audience, but honestly, I slowly start to not care anymore, seeing that the content attracting the masses, will (sadly) never be my way of creating, in any form or shape. Does this bother me? Well, the path that humans have taken is already one into the dark woods of dumbness and low attention span, sprinkled with some all-time high tolerance for any stimulus, that only a loud noisy 10-second video can fulfill. I try to stay on my always narrowing path of being myself, doing my thing, and enjoying the journey, although I sometimes get sad seeing people with millions of followers, providing borderline brain-damaging content to them, instead of geeking out about photography ;)
